Like so many of my cultural frames of reference, any knowledge I may have of basketball is pretty much rooted in the mid-1990s. I played a bit at school and, as a sport-mad kid with a half-American best friend, it was hard not to get caught up in the era of Michael Jordan and the Dream Team. Since then, it hadn’t really registered on my radar – save for the odd (again, mainly mid-90s) Hip Hop lyric – so I didn’t really know what to expect when, on a recent birthday trip to New York, my pal James offered me the present of accompanying him to Madison Square Garden for the Knicks v Lakers game.
To be fair, I didn’t really know I wanted to go at all. Or rather, I wanted to go – of course I did – but I didn’t really know if I could justify accepting such a generous gift. Especially when, as any football fan in this country will attest, the idea of sport as tourism doesn’t sit easy.
Unlike, it turned out, the tourist at this particular sporting event. Sitting easy in seats that wouldn’t have been out of place at a cinema. The idea that, compared to any other sporting occasion I’d known, it was closer to a movie-going experience was only enhanced by the huge screen directly in front of us. There was a moment – I’d looked up to see a replay and continued to watch the live action on the screen – when I completely forgot that the game on the screen was being played on the court below.
And what a game it was. What a game it is. What a player Lebron James of the Lakers is, two passes in particular eliciting a collective intake of breath that I’ll never forget. There was also, by contrast, the moment when the Knicks turned the ball over, leaving Lebron with a free run at the basket from the halfway line, the crowd giddy at the prospect. If the previous passes had come out of nowhere, then the inevitable dunk came out of everywhere.
But for all that Lebron stood out as the game’s – the Game’s – best and most dominant player, what struck me was that basketball is such a team game. From our seats – level with the right-hand basket as we looked; three-quarters of the way up the gently-banked arena – we got an insight into how space is created, the slow-slow-lightning fast rhythm of the play, and how football has borrowed the idea of screening at set-plays. For a non-contact sport, basketball is surprisingly physical.
Equally surprising was the Knicks winning – in both the context of a season in which, before the game, they sat at the foot of the Eastern Conference with a 13-56 record, and the context of the match. The Knicks started well, 41-30 up at the end of the first quarter, but trailed 63-66 at half-time. With a 9-point deficit, a touch over two minutes on the clock and just the one remaining time-out, it looked like they were staring yet another defeat in the face. But the Lakers only managed to add a single point to the Knicks’ 11. It went to the final play of the game.
124-123. A one-point game. The Lakers – or rather, Lebron James with the game in his hands and his hands on the ball. Defence! Defence! All eyes on Lebron and that bouncing ball. Defence! Defence! Mario Hezonja of the Knicks has his eyes on Lebron and that bouncing ball. Defence! Defence! Time seems to stand still, but the clock keeps ticking down. Lebron makes his move. Hold on. Hezonja has his hand on the ball. Then, with the ball bobbling up, his other hand. Then DeAndre Jordan of the Knicks has both hands on the ball, the buzzer goes, and the Knicks have nicked a win. Scenes.
They – and basketball – have won me over, too. Even without the dramatic finish, it would have been a uniquely entertaining experience. It was totally alien to any other sporting event I’ve been to, but in its own context it made perfect sense. A ball game at the Garden – at the “World’s Most Famous Arena” – is an intoxicatingly relentless show, on and off the court. From the anthem onwards, there is always something happening. Time-outs for the players, but not for the crowd. Cheerleaders, kiss cam, dance cam, t-shirt toss, caption competition, Wyclef Jean at half-time … they all fill the gaps, but none of it seems intrusive or contrived, as is the case when these Americanisms are imported into British sport, and none of it detracts from the main event.